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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652305">The Story They Will Write Someday</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillpaintasongforlou/pseuds/stfustucky'>stfustucky (iwillpaintasongforlou)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>10 percent hurt 90 percent comfort, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fluff, Human Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier gets to be a goat dad, M/M, Teacher Jaskier | Dandelion, anyways enjoy kids, de-witchered Geralt, no betas we die like men, omfg that's a canonized tag excuse me while I go read everything in it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:01:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,999</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652305</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillpaintasongforlou/pseuds/stfustucky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Make your wish. You can have anything you want. You could choose not to be a witcher. What do you desire?</i>
</p><p>Geralt uses the last wish to make himself human again. He and Jaskier go to the coast to find what pleases them. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts at all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>235</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Story They Will Write Someday</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Here, enjoy some tooth-rotting fluff that I wrote 2 weeks ago while drunk and avoiding working on Custom Made. #LetGeraltHaveNiceThings2020</p><p>Title is from Hamilton, because you can take the theatre teacher out of the theater but you can't make her shut the fuck up about musicals. *shrug*</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Make your wish. You can have anything you want. You could choose not to be a witcher. What do you desire?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>They weren’t Yennefer’s words, not really. It was the djinn speaking through her, the two entities together trying to draw the last wish from him, to break the bond between himself and the creature so that they could fight with each other for dominance. Neither one of them gave a damn about his happiness; they had peered into his mind and found some dark desire buried deep within him and dragged it out to be their plaything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except… why should he not?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ciri had been rescued from Nilfgaard years ago and was safe at Kaer Morhen being raised by Vesemir. There were no new witchers who needed collecting or training or guiding, as their guild died one by one. There would always be monsters, countless more monsters than Geralt could ever hope to kill, so many that his presence in the world fighting them off made little to no difference. The only thing that kept him on the Path was the sense of duty he had to his profession, and the bard who walked by his side in search of adventure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And suddenly, with a few simple words, the world shifted under him with the rapid expanding of opportunity and hope like he’d never seen before. Geralt was spending his life living in filth and pain and constant exhaustion, for what? Because a fickle thing like destiny told him he had to?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish to be a human again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The air screamed around him, and Yennefer screamed, and Geralt himself might have screamed, too. He could feel something happening in every cell of his body, like the setting of a broken bone but everywhere at once. The house was crumbling around them, magic was crackling in the air, and Geralt was either flying or falling or somewhere in between until he landed with a thud that jolted his body in all kinds of new and unfamiliar ways.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the dust settled, Geralt was pretty sure that he was dying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>First of all, everything </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt,</span>
  </em>
  <span> every muscle and bone from head to toe protesting his abuse. Second of all, everything had gone dull around him; the room was gray and the sounds were muted and he couldn’t smell anything but dust. And then there was his heart, which was pounding away in his chest like the hooves of a horse at full gallop, far faster than any pace at which a witcher’s heart was ever meant to beat, almost like…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His muscles shook as Geralt pushed himself up into a sitting position. Yennefer was lying beside him, her eyes closed, and he couldn’t hear her breath or her heart to tell if she was dead or alive. He shook her instead, and called her name, until she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Well, isn’t that something,” she said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She got up and started moving around the rubble-filled room, ranting to herself about missed opportunities and ruined amphoras and next times. Geralt wasn’t listening. He was holding his scarred hands before him, curling them into tight fists and letting them unfurl, marveling at the sight, wondering why hands that looked like the same ones he’d always had now felt so alien.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then there was a commotion, and some clumsy footsteps, and two hands cradling his face until he turned it to look at Jaskier. A dimmer version of Jaskier, like seen through a veil, his eyes a different shade of blue and no less beautiful because of it. He was looking at Geralt with open awe. “Your eyes! Oh, my dear witcher, what have you done?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear struck Geralt suddenly, making that already racing heart start pounding even more rapidly. “The djinn. I made the last wish. To not be a witcher anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier lost his balance in surprise, falling backwards to land hard on his backside in the debris. “You’re…?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nearly fifteen years they’d been traveling together, Jaskier trailing behind him in search of stories and excitement. Geralt had wished away everything about himself that made him exciting. There would be no stories to tell about Geralt of Rivia. He would live out the rest of his days in the obscurity that almost every other man on the continent enjoyed, without ballads and poems and fame to mark him down in history. What if Jaskier wouldn’t want to be around him anymore, now that he was--?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Human,” Jaskier breathed, eyes alight. A small smile took over his face. “Well, then, on to a new chapter. What’s next for us, old friend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt’s chest loosened, and he looked at Jaskier with more hope than he’d ever felt as a witcher. Maybe it was a uniquely human thing, the way he could suddenly see a future sprawling out ahead of him. “We could head to the coast. Get away for a while. Try to work out what pleases… us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The coast, you say?” Jaskier beamed, standing and offering Geralt a hand to help him up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt took it, letting himself be pulled up by a man he never realized was quite so strong, nearly stumbling into Jaskier’s chest. “If you’re… amenable.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My dear Geralt, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>………………… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They hadn’t meant for it to be permanent. They took Roach and headed for the coast, just the two of them, and Geralt thought for sure that after a few weeks of alternating nights at the tiny inn when there was coin and camping out when there wasn’t, Jaskier would tire of it. There were no monsters here, no stories to be told, just him and Jaskier, and he was certain that any day now Jaskier would wake up and decide that this was no longer enough for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Jaskier got a job as the teacher in the tiny seaside town, much to Geralt’s surprise. There wasn’t enough consistent work there for a musician, but the woman in charge of teaching the village’s children was getting on in years and had been looking for someone to take her place. Jaskier, having grown up preparing for the life of a viscount, apparently knew far more information about far more things than Geralt ever gave him credit for. He taught them history through poems, mathematics through song, and was now so used to speaking Elvish for at least part of the day that sometimes Geralt caught him muttering to himself in the foreign tongue. Everywhere he went in town there were adoring children flocking to him, begging for just one more song on his lute-- the one about sounding out words, please, Master Jaskier, or maybe the one about why the moon shrinks and grows?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a fear seated somewhere deep inside Geralt that he would spend his life in poverty, never having learned a proper trade. From the moment he was dropped on Vesemir’s doorstep, there had never been an option to be anything but a witcher. He no longer had the senses to track prey effortlessly through the woods, or the strength to bend steel into submission, or the prowess with weapons to take up arms to defend the town. All he had was his own two hands and the strength of a mere man, combined with exactly zero experience living in a town and being part of a community.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then one day one of Jaskier’s students fell down and scraped her knee and Geralt ground some plants he found in the woods into a paste that would take away the sting and stop the cut from getting infected. The girl’s mother --who had seven other rowdy children besides-- asked if she could buy some of the concoction from him to treat the many other busted lips and cut elbows that came through her home on a daily basis. It was a small matter for him to gather more herbs and make more of the paste, put it in the jar she gave him, and accept her coins in gratitude.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then there was the alderman whose knees popped when he walked and only needed a nightly tea to put the spring back in his step. Then the midwife who delivered a baby with fragile lungs, whose breath came clearer when a few crushed leaves were soaked in hot water and fanned across him as he fell asleep. There were little potions to make the innkeeper’s sister’s skin clear and youthful, the washerwoman’s monthly cramps a little more bearable, the baker’s cock hard when he wished to carouse with his wife. It wasn’t very hard to come up with new recipes that were toned-down versions of the same ones Geralt had been making for nearly a century. They helped people, and they put coin in his pocket, and one day some traveler asked to be directed to the herbalist and someone pointed out Geralt, and he had a place now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one looked askance at him anymore. His eyes, he had discovered the first time he came across a mirror and dared to look at his new human body, were almost the only thing that had changed about him. His body was a little less muscular, though still decorated with scars of every shape and size, and his hair was still the same silvery-white color it had always been, for as long as Geralt could remember. His eyes, however, were no longer yellow and slitted. They were what Jaskier called the loveliest shade of jade green he’d ever seen. That, along with his distinct lack of armor and swords, somehow made the people of the little town soften towards him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t Geralt of Rivia, The White Wolf, The Butcher of Blaviken. He was Geralt the herbalist, who lived with Jaskier the teacher, and he liked the sound of that much better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took them three seasons before they had enough to buy a cottage on the outskirts of the town. It wasn’t on the beach or even close to it; they had to walk a good five minutes down the path every morning to have the tea by the water that Jaskier liked to have, but it wasn’t so bad in those minutes just before sunrise where everything glowed. Those were minutes well spent, with Jaskier yawning at his side and complaining about how godsawful early the school day started and how he loved his bed more dearly than anything in the world and it was tragic to make him leave it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He got quiet, though, when Geralt sat him on a rock with the cool sea water playing at his bare toes, and tucked a mug of warm tea into his palm. He got quiet, and leaned on Geralt’s shoulder, and watched the sun come up and greet their little town with golden rays that were never anything but a promise of a good day to come. Geralt couldn’t smell contentment on a human being anymore, but he knew Jaskier was happy all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they bought their house, it had two bedrooms: one for Geralt and one for Jaskier. A month later Jaskier had come home from the spot out in the wildflower fields where he liked to hold class and had looked so beautiful that Geralt didn’t have a single rational thought in his head other than to kiss him breathless. After that, their home had two bedrooms: one for Geralt and Jaskier, and one for their loved ones who came to visit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A decade and a half I’ve loved you, and you never appeared to have any inclination to express the same sentiment,” Jaskier mused as they were tangled up together, lit only by the flickering light of a candle and clothed only in each other’s sweat and a pitifully thin sheet. Geralt traced up and down Jaskier’s spine with a single fingertip. “Why now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m human now,” Geralt answers simply, breathing in the scent from Jaskier’s hair where his head is tucked beneath Geralt’s chin. He used to have to dilute his oils and soaps when he traveled with Geralt to avoid offending the witcher’s nose, but now he gets to enjoy the citrusy floral aroma of Jaskier freely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, darling, I have noticed that a bit. Not sure what that has to do with loving me, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Witchers can’t love. Humans can.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know that’s a lie as well as I do,” Jaskier scoffed, nipping at Geralt’s chest. “And what of Vesemir and Eskel and Lambert? Ciri? Yennefer? I suppose you were just casual acquaintances with all of them until a year ago as well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had a point. “They were… different.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because you didn’t want to fuck them? That doesn’t explain Yennefer, mister, so you’d better come up with a better exc--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I never had to worry about watching them grow old and die without me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier picked his head up and looked at Geralt seriously. “If that’s what’s held you back from-- from </span>
  <em>
    <span>this,</span>
  </em>
  <span> my dear heart, then you’ve made an awful error. I will still grow old. I will still die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Geralt told him, tucking Jaskier back against his chest, “but not without me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their days were peaceful, there in that little seaside town. Geralt didn’t end each day bloody and covered in monster guts. His knowledge of the beasts of land, sea, and sky allowed him to protect the town on a preventative level, making sure every soul got a proper burial and every home was properly warded. Only once in their first three years there did Geralt find a drowner nest, and Jaskier rewarded him with several new bedroom activities when Geralt did the responsible thing and organized an entire group of able bodied men to destroy it from a distance instead of pulling out his dusty silver sword from behind the sofa and going after it himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Any battles they faced were of a different nature now. They waged wars over where bookshelves should go, and about Jaskier’s muddy boots tracking halfway into the kitchen every other day before he remembered to leave them on the porch alongside Geralt’s. Skirmishes erupted about whether the drawing from one of Jaskier’s students that was tacked up in the kitchen was one of a tree or a castle. Peace talks had to ensue one particularly memorable spring after nearly a decade in their home, when they couldn’t agree on whether to spend the extra coin they’d saved on a new wagon or a new baby goat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(They got a baby goat. Eskel had thoroughly convinced Jaskier that being a goat dad was the greatest joy he’d ever know, and Jaskier was the greatest joy </span>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt</span>
  </em>
  <span> would ever know, and that meant Jaskier almost always got what he wanted.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t live their lives in isolation. Every winter without fail they would pack up their trunks and take Roach --and Geralt </span>
  <em>
    <span>insisted </span>
  </em>
  <span>on continuing to name them all Roach, even after the spirited girl Jaskier knew passed peacefully one autumn afternoon-- and they would all head up to Kaer Morhen. It wasn’t as easy as it used to be, both because Geralt and Jaskier both got stiff joints in the winter months nowadays, and because they had to make preparations for the loving town they left behind. There was nothing for it, though. Jaskier tasked his students with books to study in his absence, and Geralt worked late into the night all autumn to make sure that the healers were well stocked, and when the time came they made their way to their other home, because family was family and nothing could keep them away from that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The number of Wolves in Kaer Morhen did not fall, the witchers insisted when Geralt came to them the first winter with apologies on his lips. He would always be pack, no matter what body he was in. If anything, they added, taking in the way that Geralt’s hands never quite managed to leave Jaskier, their pack had grown. It had never been a conventional family anyways, and anyone who argued the point could go fuck themselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Winter wasn’t the only time they got to see family, either. Throughout the year visitors would come by, just to check in. Eskel would bring a new bell for Daisy’s collar, or Lambert would bring some new vodka he’d distilled that Geralt and Jaskier both could only manage a single shot of before being drunk under the table like the old men they were. Yennefer would portal in anytime she was bored, or anytime she saw something that reminded her of them. There was a charm hanging on the fence in Geralt’s herb garden that did a tidy job of keeping the slugs away, and another in the tiny schoolhouse building that kept Jaskier’s collection of books from getting moldy in the damp sea air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Ciri visited too, every chance she got, so often that Geralt and Jaskier both were secretly convinced that she wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>in the neighborhood</span>
  </em>
  <span> nearly as much as she’d have them believe. She had Elder blood and the training of a witcher, and was off on the Path doing greater things than any of the other wolves could ever have dreamed of doing. Occasionally Geralt would try to give advice and without ever meaning to he would take on a lecturing tone and frown in a way that made the wrinkles of his aging face even more pronounced. When that happened, Jaskier would laugh and shove him say, “Let the girl have her own adventures, Geralt. We’ve had ours.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They always spoke of their adventures in the past tense, but the truth was, they still had adventures in their little seaside town. They were just adventures of a new kind, ones of slow days and quiet affection and </span>
  <em>
    <span>peace</span>
  </em>
  <span> as they grew old the way they were meant to, side by side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, in the end, was a story worth telling.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Shoutout to the Bards of Geraskier 18+ writer server for being faced with drunk!Charlie and having the chaotic wisdom to be like FUCK YEAH YOU SHOULD WRITE THE THING. If you, too, would like to be encouraged and enabled in your fanfiction writing endeavors, hit me up for an invite link!</p><p>stfustucky | tumblr<br/>Charlie Stfustucky#3055 | discord</p></blockquote></div></div>
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